May 10, 1987, I remember It
like it was yesterday. How could I forget? Pete, Ted and I were
having trouble finding a hole to dig that morning when Ted went
to talk to a man working out in his yard about digging his privy.
Ted showed him the house andlocation of the privy on the
1919 Sanborn map. Kyle Thomas as it turned out was a most
friendly fellow and readily agreed to our request. The probing
was practically unnecessary due to the large sunken spot in the
middle of the backyard. Just as we were removing the first pieces
of sod, Mrs. Thomas came rushing out of the house wanting to know
what we were going to do to her beautiful lawn. After explaining,
she calmed down.

The house, located
near the downtown area, was a fine example of Victorian
architecture with lots of gingerbread under the eaves, a
bay window off the living room and nicely detailed
woodwork around the windows. I commented on the beauty of
the house and Mrs. Thomas remarked about how proud she
was of it and how she had fallen in love with it from the
moment she had first seen it.

The hole turned out to be a
stone-lined pit measuring about 4 x 6 x 11 feet deep and was
literally filled with bottles. Unfortunately most of them were
too new. The first nine feet yielded only machine made items. At
the nine and a half foot level we hit the flood layer. In January
of 1913 the Little Miami River overflowed it banks in a historic
flood that put the entire town under water. The receding waters
left a deposit of silt and mud in the outhouses of this period.
This benchmark layer served as a reliable method of determining
the age of this particular hole. The layer itself was 8-12"
thick and contained no artifacts. Immediately below the clay we
found out first bimal bottles. Most were uninteresting, clear,
prescription bottles.

About this time Mrs. Thomas
came out with her camera and began taking pictures of us in the
hole. She was very excited about the whole affair and as we
talked she began to tell us more about the house, which she said
had been built in the early 1 870s. It was then while we were
taking a break that she told us about the ghost.

When first viewing the
house Mrs. Thomas said she had a peculiar feeling that something
was telling her to buy this house. In the early morning of the
day they firstmoved into the house she thought she heard
someone calling her name or calling to her. No one else was
awake. As she sat up in bed she could see into the living room
and saw what she described as two apparitions. These appeared as
mist or smoke-like figures. One was tall and the other short.
They appeared to be talking to one another. She got out of bed
and moved to the doorway. At one point they noticed that she had
been watching them and they began talking to her. They indicated
that they had come in the spirit of love and would not harm her.
The tall one said he had been a carpenter and had built, lived,
and died in the house. Mrs. Thomas, somewhat taken aback by all
this, became scared when the ghost-like figures started towards
her. She screamed and motioned them away. They disappeared.

Later that same morning,
Mr. Thomas developed breathing problems, nearly died and was
rushed to the hospital. Mrs. Thomas is convinced the ghosts
appeared to warn her of this impending disaster. While she said
she has not seen the ghosts again, noises are often heard.

The Thomas' rent out the
second story of their home to a young lady who also claims to
have seen the ghost. Both report hearing footsteps on the stairs,
which are blocked off to separate the two living quarters. The
renter described how upon coming home one evening she found the
doorway to the stairs, which had been nailed shut, open -the same
stairs on which they both report hearing footsteps at night. The
two women were very convinced of what they had seen and heard.

We decided that whatever
lay below the flood layer in the outhouse had belonged to the
original owner (our tall apparition). What we found was quite
surprising. There were the usual household artifacts: ten jelly
jars, 2 vanilla bottles, a broken wide mouth kitchen crock and a
number of wax seal fruit jars, several 1858 masons, one baby
bottle, a Parlor Pride stove polish and a broken imported
crockery gin bottle. It was the medicines that were so unusual.
The following is a partial list of the items found:

The hole contained numerous examples of
many of the above mentioned medicines, as well as dozens of small
pill bottles, and in excess of one hundred unembossed clear
prescription bottles. Someone had been very sick, possibly with
consumption (Tuberculosis) and probably died in great pain
judging from the many pain killers and cure bottles. I began to
get an uneasy feeling digging in this hole.

While we were unearthing this treasure
trove of medicinal potions, we heard this loud crash. A baseball
came out of nowhere and smashed into the window of Pete's truck.
This seem liked a bad omen and made us all a little nervous. We
gathered up our finds refilled the hole and left.

Before leaving, I had mentioned to Mrs.
Thomas the idea of an article for the bottle magazine. I returned
the next week to interview her in hopes of getting more
information. When I asked her about it she said that the ghost
had told her it did not want an article published and she refused
to talk about it anymore.

I began to write this article back in May
of 1987. Within a few weeks, Ted had fallen off a roof and broke
his elbow, and I was in the hospital for a back injury. When I
got back around to it, the article I had begun writing had
disappeared. No amount of searching located it. It seems to have
simply vanished. I guess I took this as a final warning and
forgot about the whole idea of publishing this story until last
week when I was cleaning out a drawer searching for an address, I
came across the article. Hopefully you'll hear from me again.